· CHRONOLOGY ·

1844		Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche born on 15 October. First child of Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, priest, and Franziska (née Oehler) at Röcken in Saxony.
1846		Sister Elisabeth Nietzsche born on 10 July.
1848		Brother Ludwig Joseph Nietzsche born on 27 February.
1849		Death of Karl Ludwig Nietzsche on 30 July from ‘brain softening’.
1850		Death of Ludwig Joseph on 4 January. Family moves to Naumburg. Nietzsche attends the public elementary school.
1851		Nietzsche attends the private institute of Professor Weber.
1854		Nietzsche attends Naumburg Cathedral School.
1858		Franziska, Friedrich and Elisabeth move within Naumburg to Weingarten 18. In the autumn, Nietzsche begins school at Schulpforta.
1860		Founds Germania, a literary and musical club with his friends Gustav Krug and Wilhelm Pinder. Beginning of lifelong friendship with Erwin Rohde.
1864		Graduates from Schulpforta in September. Enrols at Bonn University in October, studying theology and classical philology. Joins the Franconia fraternity.
1865		Leaves Bonn for Leipzig University. Drops theology. Studies classical philology under Professor Friedrich Ritschl. Discovers Schopenhauer. Visits a Cologne brothel.
1867		Military service. Begins training in the 2nd Cavalry Battalion, 4th Field Army Regiment.
1868		Wounded in riding accident. Is enchanted on hearing Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Meistersinger overtures. Increasingly disaffected with philology. Meets Wagner in November.
1869		Appointed Extraordinary Professor of Classical Philology at Basle University. Renounces Prussian citizenship. Visits Wagner and his mistress Cosima von Bülow at their villa, Tribschen, in Lucerne. First ascent of Mont Pilatus. Makes notes for The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. Is present at Tribschen when Cosima gives birth to Wagner’s son, Siegfried. Spends Christmas at Tribschen.
1870		Promoted to full professor. Public lectures on ‘Ancient Music Drama’, ‘Socrates and Tragedy’ and Oedipus Rex. War is declared between Germany and France in July. Enrols as medical orderly in Franco-Prussian War. Treating the wounded, he becomes infected with diphtheria and dysentery and is hospitalised. Returns to Basle. Beginning of friendship with Franz Overbeck, professor of theology and critic of Protestantism. Wagner marries Cosima.
1871		Applies unsuccessfully for Chair of Philosophy at Basle. Writes The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. End of Franco-Prussian War. Second German Reich declared. Wilhelm I crowned Emperor.
1872		Rides in carriage with Wagner at the laying of the foundation stone of the Festival Theatre in Bayreuth. The Birth of Tragedy is published. It is harshly criticised by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf and stoutly defended by Erwin Rohde. No students of Classics enrol for his winter lectures on Greek and Latin rhetoric. Richard and Cosima Wagner leave Tribschen for Bayreuth.
1873		Begins ‘Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks’, which remains unfinished. Meets Paul Rée. First Untimely Meditation, ‘David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer’, published in August. Writes hectoring ‘Exhortation to the Germans’ to raise money for Bayreuth. It is rejected.
1874		Publishes two Untimely Meditations: ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life’ and ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’. Wagner finishes the Ring cycle and invites Nietzsche to spend summer in Bayreuth. Nietzsche takes health cure in Black Forest.
1875		Begins writing fourth Untimely Meditation, ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’. Health very poor but continues teaching. Elisabeth comes to Basle to look after him. Meets lifelong supporter Heinrich Köselitz (later known as Peter Gast). Severely ill over the winter.
1876		Publishes ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’ in time for the opening of the first Bayreuth Festival. Flirts with Louise Ott. Leaves Bayreuth suddenly. Begins work on Human, All Too Human. Proposes to Mathilde Trampedach, who declines. In October, obtains sick leave from Basle. To Genoa; first sighting of the sea. To Sorrento with Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée. Reads Voltaire and Montaigne. Last meeting with Wagner.
1877		In Sorrento until early May. Visits Capri, Pompeii and Herculaneum. Medical examination by Dr Otto Eiser. Eyes very bad. Resumes lecturing in the autumn, dependent upon Peter Gast as amanuensis and Elisabeth as housekeeper.
1878		Publishes Human, All Too Human. Sends it to Wagner. Wagner sends Nietzche the libretto of Parsifal. Neither enjoys the other’s work. Wagner attacks Nietzsche in Bayreuther Blätter. Elisabeth returns to Naumburg. Close friendship with Franz Overbeck and his wife.
1879		Publishes ‘A Miscellany of Opinions and Maxims’ as appendix to Human, All Too Human. Resigns from Basle University in May, citing ill health. Granted a pension of 3,000 Swiss francs for six years (later extended). Writes ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’. Suffers 118 days of bad migraine attacks throughout the year. Plans to become a gardener living in a tower in Naumburg town wall.
1880		Travels to south Tyrol, meets Peter Gast in Riva on Lake Garda. They travel to Venice. A restless year, ending in Genoa at Christmas. Writes Daybreak.
1881		Further travelling to Recoaro, Lake Como and St Moritz. Discovers Spinoza. Visits Sils-Maria for the first time; experiences revelation of eternal recurrence. First sketches of Zarathustra. Publishes Daybreak. Returns to Genoa; identifies with Columbus. Hears Bizet’s opera Carmen for the first time.
1882		Experiments with typewriter. Publishes The Gay Science. Writes poems The Idylls of Messina. Travels to Messina. In April, to Rome where he meets Lou Salomé and Paul Rée; Lou proposes they live together in an ‘unholy trinity’ of free spirits. On Mount Orta, Nietzsche proposes to Lou; she declines. In Basle, the notorious photograph is taken of Nietzsche and Rée yoked to a cart with Lou brandishing a whip over them. Nietzsche takes Lou to Tribschen but refuses to accompany Elisabeth and Lou to Bayreuth. Meets them in Tautenburg, where he reveals the eternal recurrence to Lou. Breaks with Elisabeth and his mother. The ‘unholy trinity’ plan to live and study together in Paris, but Lou and Rée run away together. He dulls the pain with opium and writes of suicide.
1883		Composes the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in January. In February, Wagner dies in Venice. Writes Part II of Zarathustra in Sils-Maria and Part III in Nice. Elisabeth announces her engagement to anti-Semitic agitator Bernhard Förster.
1884		Publishes Part III of Zarathustra. Problems with publisher: Nietzsche’s books are not selling. Meets Meta von Salis-Marschlins and Resa von Schirnhofer. Adopts Polish ancestry. Reconciled with Elisabeth. Writes Part IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
1885		Privately prints small run of Zarathustra Part IV. Elisabeth marries Förster. Nietzsche pays for a new headstone for his father’s grave. Writes Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future.
1886		Beyond Good and Evil privately published, as all his books will be from now on. Publisher Ernst Fritzsch buys the rights to Nietzsche’s earlier work and publishes new editions of The Birth of Tragedy and Human, All Too Human (now with a second volume comprising ‘A Miscellany of Opinions and Maxims’ and ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’) and Daybreak. Franz Liszt dies in Bayreuth. Elisabeth and Bernhard Förster travel to Paraguay to set up Nueva Germania, a ‘racially pure’ Aryan colony.
1887		Experiences earthquake in Nice. Reads Dostoyevsky in French translation. Lou Salomé announces her engagement to Friedrich Carl Andreas. Nietzsche sets her poem ‘Hymn to Friendship’ to music and has it privately printed as ‘Hymn to Life’. Attempts in vain to get it performed. Hears Parsifal and is enraptured by the music. Publishes On the Genealogy of Morals, a Polemic. New, expanded editions of Daybreak and The Gay Science.
1888		Enjoys public acclaim at last after Georg Brandes lectures on his work in Copenhagen. Corresponds with Swedish playwright August Strindberg, who writes ‘Nietzschean’ plays. Nietzsche discovers Turin, where he writes The Case of Wagner: A Musician’s Problem. Abandons The Will to Power. Completes, in quick succession, Twilight of the Idols: or How to Philosophise with a Hammer; The Anti-Christ: A Curse on Christianity; his final autobiography Ecce Homo, or How To Become What You Are; Nietzsche contra Wagner: from the Files of a Psychologist. Collects poems he wrote in 1880s into the volume Dionysian Dithyrambs. Beginnings of breakdown evident from increasingly bizarre letter-writing.
1889		Collapses in Turin on 3 January. Loyal friend Overbeck escorts him to Switzerland. Diagnosed as suffering from progressive paralysis induced by syphilitic infection. Committed to an asylum in Jena. Twilight of the Idols published on 24 January. In Paraguay, Bernhard Förster commits suicide. Elisabeth fights for survival of the colony.
1890		Discharged into his mother’s care in childhood home in Naumburg. Sinks ever deeper into insanity and creeping paralysis, losing both his reason and his speech.
1896		Enthusiasm for his work sweeps the avant-garde. Richard Strauss composes and premieres Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
1897		Franziska Nietzsche dies on 20 April. Elisabeth moves Nietzsche and his papers to Weimar, where she founds the Nietzsche archive.
1900		Nietzsche dies on 25 August. Interred in family grave in Röcken.
1901		Elisabeth publishes first version of The Will to Power, concocted by her from fragments of Nietzsche’s writings.
1904		Elisabeth publishes greatly expanded ‘definitive edition’ of The Will to Power.
1908		Nietzsche’s autobiography Ecce Homo is at last published. Unflattering references to Elisabeth are omitted.
1919		Elisabeth’s cousin Max Oehler, an enthusiastic National Socialist, becomes chief archivist of the Nietzsche archive.
1932		Elisabeth, an ardent admirer of Mussolini, persuades the Weimar National Theatre to put on Mussolini’s co-authored play Campo di Maggio. Adolf Hitler visits Elisabeth in her box.
1933		Hitler visits the Nietzsche archive. Elisabeth presents him with Nietzsche’s walking stick.
1934		Hitler visits the archive with architect Albert Speer and is photographed staring at the bust of Nietzsche.
1935		Elisabeth dies. Hitler attends her funeral and lays a wreath. Having previously disinterred her brother from his location in the centre of the line of family graves, Elisabeth takes up this important position for herself.